


The Heart of the Matter

by codenamecynic



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Anal Sex, Bathroom Sex, Breathplay, Diary/Journal, Dirty Talk, Double Penetration, Dragon Age Kink Meme, Drunk Sex, F/F, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Honey, Kitchen Sex, Loneliness, Multi, Oral Sex, Self-Denial, Sexual Fantasy, Threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-27
Updated: 2013-03-31
Packaged: 2017-12-06 15:32:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/737267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codenamecynic/pseuds/codenamecynic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>There were things about Marian that nobody knew.</i>
</p><p>Hawke fantasizes about her companions, but nobody knows – until Sandal thinks her journal entries are letters and mails them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Secrets That We Keep

**Author's Note:**

> An old story to fill a prompt on the Dragon Age Kink Meme a looooong time ago. It quickly got out of hand.
> 
> The original prompt (and fill) can be found here: http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/5307.html?thread=16155579#t16155579
> 
> The following story has been edited a bit for grammar and because I can't stop rearranging my own words and phrases, but the plot (and... er... action?) is all the same. Hope you enjoy.

There were things that her companions didn’t know.

Of course it stood to reason that even the closest of friends and comrades couldn’t know every small detail about each other’s lives, no matter how much time they spent together, but... really.

There were things about Marian that nobody knew.

Like that she actually _liked_ wearing dresses and had once looked forward to the obligatory noble functions her mother made her attend just so she would have the excuse to wear them.  That was a secret.  She’d also collected a menagerie of small animal figures wrought in glass that lived in a small wooden chest, wrapped carefully in scraps of fabric and hidden beneath the rabble of useless and sentimental things that had come with her from Lothering.  She pretended they were Bethany’s and nobody needed to know otherwise.  She also liked to bake.  Nobody needed to know that either.

But more than anything, nobody needed to know that Marian was a little bit lonely.

All of these things, these little, secret things, were things that _Marian_ was or that _Marian_ did. 

Not Hawke. Never Hawke.

Hawke lived in her armor.  Hawke decorated with blood spatters and broken shields.  Hawke needed liquor as her only source of sustenance.

Hawke needed no one.

Hawke was a hero – the Champion of Kirkwall. These were all things that heroes did, at least as far as the stories were concerned. She was hard pressed to imagine a world in which the local drunks would be more interested in hearing about how Marian learned how to play the lyre when she was eight because her mother thought it might make her more ladylike, rather than how Hawke once used one to beat somebody to death.

That was also probably why there were so many rumors about Hawke’s vigorous and mightily adventurous sexual escapades – or as Isabela liked to call them, giggling drunk over Varric’s latest novel – sexcapades. There were stories about how she’d supposedly taken on every man, woman and dwarf over at the Blooming Rose and had come out the victor (which the denizens of the Rose retold endlessly with shameless embellishments), and about her theoretical participation in a racy lyrium-infused threesome with the Knight-Commander and the First Enchanter (though personally she thought Meredith’s vagina might well be made out of razorblades and that the stiffest thing Orsino had to offer anyone these days was his staff - and not the first one that came to mind). 

There was even a bawdy song about how she’d won a duel with a Qunari Arishok – which was actually true, only the song took place in a bedroom and culminated in the proud horned warrior weeping like a child for failure to ‘satisfy the demands of her Qun’. 

Hawke found these stories amusing and added more outlandish tales to the mix to cover over the reality of the situation, which was this: Hawke spent so much time fumbling around Kirkwall trying to muster enough reputation to keep her family safe and enough coin to keep her friends in booze and out of prison that frankly, she didn’t have a lot of time for courtships. Which was to say in more direct terms: Hawke and Marian had about a thimbleful of romantic experience to split between them, and when one was confronted on a daily basis by incredibly capable and attractive people that one might consider, thusly, out of reach on pain of great personal embarrassment, it made for a very difficult life.

Plus, when you factored in Marian’s crippling shyness about the issue with Hawke’s generally rough personality being comprised solely by a sharp tongue and a smart mouth, it didn’t make for an easy time with relationships. Oh friendships she could do, just barely, but put her in a situation where clothing might start flying and it all sort of started to unravel – and not in a good way. 

That didn’t mean she didn’t think about it. 

She thought about it. 

A lot.

Having long-since given up on actually achieving any of these fantasy liaisons she was so fond of imagining, she wrote about them instead. At least she used to, in the loosely-bound pages of her journal (the one _not_ a decoy – that one ended up with pieces missing (Varric), used as a scratchboard for manifesto ideas (Anders), illustrated (Isabela) or with notes to her written in it for lack of effort (Fenris) or thought (Merrill) to find another piece of paper). 

Hawke had more important things to do as Champion of Kirkwall these days and Marian – well. Marian would get over it.


	2. Marigolds

When she received the letter bright and early on a Monday morning, Aveline thought it was a joke. In fact, her first suspicion was that it was some kind of forgery.  What the single page detailed could _never_ have come from Hawke, even if it was written in the slanting script that was easily recognizable as her friend’s strangely feminine handwriting. Not to mention the Amell crest embossed into the sealing wax plain as you please.

Still, it wasn’t possible.  The simple prose, the wistfulness of it barely even sounded like her.  It was far more… artistic.  Almost pretty.  Whoever had written this had a fluid way with words, and conversing with Hawke was on all but the rarest of occasions like trying to hold a conversation with a spiked club swinging for your face.

_…standing outside her office door, the badge of honor for all to see that represents all the things that she is. Strength of character, strength of conviction, strength of arm. Strength; that which has intrigued me most about her these long years. As I stood sentry outside that barred gate, silent accomplice to the quiet laughter and small sounds of pleasure resonating from within, I could not help but wonder what it would be like to be so lucky as to have Donnic’s place for a day, for an hour, for even a moment._

_I have watched her body; it is a thing of wonder, unabashed in its power. Arms alabaster white beneath her armor, lean muscle rising beneath the skin, and legs long and strong, pale too, like milk; no – sweetest cream._

_I imagine what those legs might look like, wrapped around Donnic’s slim hips, spurring him harder, faster. I imagine her head thrown back to bare her neck, long and soft and so pale. I imagine copper hair, burnished like brand new coins, loosed from its confines and left to scatter over her shoulders…_

_I imagine these things, and I imagine what it would be like were I to stand in her guardsman’s place._

_I would shake my gauntlets and my gloves away and thread my fingers through her marigold hair, urge her head back so that I might trace the line of her jaw – stubborn and beautiful – with my lips and quest determined along her slender neck to her shoulders – stubborn and beautiful too – and mark one with a hungry kiss, turning white to blush. It would be a secret, hidden beneath armor where none might ever know save she and I._

_How far do her freckles descend, I wonder? I would follow them, find and press my lips to each, trace a roadmap with my tongue as my hands peeled away every metal plate, every leather barrier to reach the flesh beneath, salty with sweat._

_And when she was bare before me, soft and strong like copper marigolds, I would push her back against her desk until she lie, pale breasts rising with each breath, smooth ivory thighs splayed and damp between, like a goddess on the altar of her office. I would bury my lips into the sharp sweetness-_

Abruptly she put the letter down on her desk and stared at it sightlessly for several eternal minutes, one metal-gloved hand drumming on the arm of her chair, before deciding that she had been in this office long enough. It was time to go home.

She hadn’t been certain whether or not to share Hawke’s letter with Donnic, especially not after the surprised but pleased expression on his face when she stepped through the door of the small but comfortable home they shared on the edge of Hightown and drug him by the lapels of his shirt to the table where they shared their meals. Especially not after she shook her marigold hair free from its binding and let it fall over her pale, freckled shoulders, digging her strong fingers into his back while her hips quickened and her thighs hugged his ears as his mouth worked eagerly between them.

Still, when they had spent themselves and lay sweat-slicked and breathless tangled in the sheets of their bed, she gave him the note.

“I don’t know what it means,” she confessed as Donnic whistled lowly, resting her head on the hard plane of his stomach.

“Well, Marian’s always been sort of a special case,” he reasoned eventually, lying back with letter still in hand. “Maybe she’s lonely.”

“Hawke, lonely?” Aveline scoffed, laughing at the idea out of reflex. “How could she possibly be lonely with half of the rumors flying around about what she does at night? Surely not _all_ of that can be baseless fantasy.”

“But when was the last time you actually _saw_ her with someone?”

“Why now?” She asked quickly, trying to cover the telling moment of silence as she wracked her brain for an answer and came up empty. “Surely this can’t be new. Why write a letter like this and sit on it for years?”

Donnic propped his head up on one bent arm and craned his head to look down at her. “It doesn’t exactly read like a letter, love. Surely you noticed that?” There was another telling moment of silence, and a grin stretched itself across his pleasant features. “It got you a little excited, didn’t it?”

Aveline snatched the letter out of her husband’s hand and swatted him with it, before dragging him back under the covers.

**

It was a nice sort of night; in summer Kirkwall was miserable for someone who had grown up in the cold, wet, muddy lands of Ferelden, but when autumn rolled in and the cold winter winds began to blow across the sea from the south it became surprisingly pleasant, even in all of her armor.

Hawke was on patrol with Aveline – partially for lack of anything better to do, partially because Varric told her it was good for her image, partially because she really did care if the streets were full of fools with pointy sticks trying to mug people in the dark, but mostly because she didn’t get to see Aveline often enough these days and the Hawke Estate could get mighty quiet. She, Bodahn, Sandal and Orana weren’t quite enough people to keep the place from having a haunted feel sometimes, not even with Toothless helping out – and the dog made enough of a mess to count as two people.

Anyway, she’d rather be out here than in there, even if it was just as quiet tonight as it might have been in her bedroom.

“Pretty quiet tonight,” Aveline said, echoing her thoughts.

Hawke grunted a wordless agreement. “They probably heard us coming, shit themselves in terror and ran home to change their pants.”

“That’s an image.”

Hawke smirked, nudging Aveline almost too hard with an armored elbow. “I try. You’re still my favorite person to kill things with, if that helps.”

“I’m so honored.”

“You should be.”

They walked along in the mostly-comfortable silence they’d blunted between them over the last near-decade, heading back toward Hightown and the Viscount’s Keep from Lowtown. Aveline was quiet, almost distracted as she fiddled with the bandana around her neck that kept her armor from chafing and Hawke, well. Hawke wasn’t exactly the paragon of polite, pointless conversation.

“Well,” she said eloquently, clapping Aveline on the pauldroned shoulder with a gloved hand. “Night.”

Before she could turn to go, heading back to the home she may or may not be avoiding, Aveline’s gauntlet closed firmly around her arm and swung her around. She was guided back and back with gentle but persistent pressure until the shield strapped over one shoulder clanged dully against the stone wall of the courtyard. Aveline’s pale skin shone almost blue in the moonlight, freckles obscured by the shadows and even the sunny copper color of her hair turned deepest auburn in the darkness and Hawke couldn’t help but stare at her, caught off-guard and vaguely taken aback.

The hard metal of Aveline’s gauntleted fingers dug beneath her armor, gaining purchase beneath her heavy breastplate near its shoulder straps and she was held still as the Guard-Captain leaned against her. It was a poor fit, metal clanging and scraping as the slightly taller red-head pressed her between her body and the wall at her back, closing the distance between them and leaning down to press her lips to Hawke’s.

Stunned beyond the ability to put word to thought, she could do little more than stare at Aveline’s too-close face, closing her eyes only when the kiss drug on and on and on. It was a still thing, a simple press of mouth to mouth nearly chaste but for the length of it. She could smell the scent she had associated with Aveline from the first, the heady smell of leather and metal, and beneath it all the feminine fragrance of lemon soap and something deep and earthy, something that reminded her of soil and rolling hills and the damp scent of a field after a good rain.

She didn’t even realize her hands had moved to Aveline’s hips and that she was holding the taller woman against her just as hard as the grip hooked into her breastplate until Aveline gently stepped away.

“I love you Marian,” she said, stilling any inevitably thoughtless comments before they had a chance to emerge from Hawke’s still gaping mouth. “You’ve always been a good friend. It’s my honor to be yours in return.”

Searching in vain for some sort of response Hawke forced her lips into their most familiar expression; a one-sided smirk just on this side of sarcastic for all that she could still feel the soft press of Aveline’s against them. She wanted to shuck off her gauntlet and lift her fingers up to touch, just to check and see if somehow they had been irrevocably altered by the experience, but she didn’t. She only grinned.

“Night, Hawke.”

“Night Aveline.”


	3. The Holy and the Sacred

His back hurt. His knees hurt. His- no, he couldn’t think of it, could scarcely allow the words to even form in his mind lest he further other aches, aches less easily satisfied.

It was to banish this throbbing that Sebastian was on his knees in the first place, here on the hard stone floor of his small cell in the Chantry. Here he knelt for hours on end, until his feet were numb and his fingers were stiff, knuckles white from their frantic clasp, held together lest he prove his weakness yet again to himself and the Maker and allow his idle hands to seek shameful release for the persistent pull in his middle that wanted… 

_That wanted._

Maker knew he had prayed this way before, so many times, seeking solace in blessed Andraste to whom his chastity was devoted. But today, this time, the Bride of the Maker only seemed to mock him with the very shape of her, carved painstakingly into the small figure he kept on the table near his bed. He would look at the breasts shaped into the cast bronze statue and think of the flesh and blood woman who lived not so far from where he was now. He would think of Hawke’s generous hips and sleek thighs and see them echoed in poured metal.

He was not sure which was the greater sin, lusting after the body of the woman he called dearest friend, or seeing its shadows in the wife of a god.

Echoes, echoes were the problem. His cries of completion echoed loud in his empty room on the nights he could not help himself, seeking empty satisfaction in his own touch, praying that the burden of these cravings – the urges of a lesser man, a sinful man – might be lifted from his shoulders.

And her words, the words she had written with clear and clean precision, echoed without cease behind eyelids closed tight.

_Maker, dearest father, I have sinned. I have looked upon the body of a man - the broad shoulders, the strong arms, the beautiful, deft fingers of the body of a man who is my friend – and felt lust. I would like to pretend that it is an accident, the misstep of a wandering mind, and yet this would not be a true confession if I did not acknowledge that the shape of him hovers in my mind some nights when it is quiet and I am alone, lying naked in my empty bed._

_I feel the silk of my sheets against me, under me, above me, enveloping, and I slide my hands over the cloth to feel the shape of the mattress underneath and wonder how it might feel if I were to pry my way past the white sheen of his armor to the shirt he wears beneath. How the breadth of his chest, the hard planes of him, might feel under my palms. Would his lungs swell with heated breathes? Might I feel his heart hammering beneath my fingertips, throbbing in answer to an unasked question?_

_Idle hands do me as little credit as idle thoughts when I am left alone in black darkness and red firelight and my fingers delve beneath my thighs; my fingers are rough, callused, and I pretend they are his, come to cleanse any pain with pleasure, finding purchase within me to deliver redemption from the inside out…_

_Even the face of your lady bride is not enough to deter these imaginings, for when he wears her in the way he does she is the gatekeeper of promise, a temptation of her own. He need do little more than speak my name and I regret that I had not known him sooner, echoing Isabela in the desire to have him hold me as surely as he holds his grandfather’s bow, to feel the slide of his fingers up my spine as they do along the shaft of an arrow, fated to be pinned to a bowstring drawn taut and quivering and ultimately loosed._

_And yet perhaps the appeal would not be the same, for it is the passion in his voice that rouses me when he utters words of faith and righteousness. I am not a righteous woman, and when he speaks thus I am glad. I can only too easily imagine the sound of those holy words whispered in my ear, holding me fast in his conviction as my wicked tongue spills forth every misdeed, every untoward thought, every poorly done desire in confession._

_What penances he would demand I can only conjecture, the words as hard in his golden, lilting voice as the planes of his body before – no, behind, above – me. Would prayers and whispered admissions suffice, or would he punish me should I find myself breathing his name, rather than that of our god? And if punishment was a temptation unto itself…_

She was cruel to put her confession to words he could not help himself but to read, to commit to memory, the shape of them reverberating like echoes all around.

**

Merrill very rarely received mail. There were not many people outside of Kirkwall that would bother to mail her something, and the Dalish weren’t much for letters. That wasn’t to say they Dalish couldn’t write, it wouldn’t do at all to make them sound like ignorant barbarians for all that they didn’t seem to appreciate _her_ particular efforts, but they didn’t often have any real need to send messages into populated places. At least, not on paper, that was what messengers were for. Unless you were a Keeper of course… but never mind, that wasn’t even important.

What was important was that she’d gotten a letter, and even better, a letter from Hawke. The gods knew she and Hawke didn’t see eye to eye on everything (which was also even more difficult because Hawke was so much taller than she was), but there was a kindness to the woman hidden beneath the brusque manner and the temperamental gruffness that she wasn’t sure anyone else got to see. Hawke had a good heart, even if she did like to pretend it was made out of metal.

The letter, of course, confused her – but then everything did. It had taken her a while to realize that it was a story of sorts, kind of like the sorts of things Isabela and Varric were always writing and pretending she didn’t know about. She liked Isabela’s latest one about Fenrir and Andrews, an elven warrior and a human apostate who conquered one another’s prejudices and found an epic love. Of course, they spent most of the book conquering _each other_ , fifty-three out of sixty-seven pages to be exact, but they ended up happy in the end and that was what was important. And also, there was something innately arousing about the thought of a slight elven body overtaking a larger human form with pleasure in the throes of passion.

Apparently Hawke thought so too.

_I don’t think she knows just how appealing she is. Without her tattoos, the markings she calls ‘vallaslin’, she would look almost a child for her slim build and her short stature. With them, however, she resembles an exotic, otherworldly thing. Blood-writing, a mark of adulthood among the Dalish she explains to me, and I am doubly grateful for it because it reminds me that she is not some babe to be robbed from a cradle but a woman near to my own age._

_I cannot help but be curious how far those markings extend, whether or not they twist and creep like vines to twine around her slender limbs like the trunks of trees. I wonder, should they be there and should I press my tongue to her soft skin, if they would taste different than her pale, naked flesh? Even more, would she taste different than I taste if I were to slip my fingers between her thighs and then between my lips to suckle her readiness?_

_Clean, like river water, maybe. Or spicy, herbal._

_She hugs me, armor and all, and my cheek presses the softness of her hair. It smells of clean earth and wood smoke and I do not return the embrace because all I can think of is winding my fingers to the roots of her short dark locks and bringing her mouth to mine. To caress her soft, smiling lips with my own and then to urge her lower to where a wetter, lusher set crave the cool sweetness of her breath, the press of her lips against heated flesh._

_I walk behind her in the marketplace because the crown of her shining head and the elegant points of her ears drive me to distraction, imagining that they would be all I could see of her as she buries herself between my thighs, her tongue pulsing against my most tender of places the same as magic must pulse through her veins. I imagine sometimes that she might lift her head and look at me, mouth pressed to that vital spot, peering like an owl with ruffled feathers from where my hands have mussed her hair and blinking those big, green, innocent eyes at me._

_And in my imaginings there is always the glint of wickedness, almost of amusement, for I could never bring myself to corrupt someone as guileless as she seems most times when she speaks. But then even the most innocent creature, the gentlest-seeming and purest, may have a bite that stings…_

She thought that last bit was sort of apt. Everybody thought that just because she didn’t get dirty jokes she was some kind of innocent virgin, but that wasn’t the case – and thank you very much!  If even Hawke had gotten into this trend of dirty story writing amongst their circle, maybe she ought to give it a try.

Merrill had to admit, Hawke had a flair with words that she would not have expected. Also, she couldn’t help but be a little bit flattered at the similarity between herself and the elven girl in the story, even though she had a feeling she’d received this page by accident. Most likely it was meant to go to Varric or Isabela, but silly Sandal – always screwing up the post.

**

When Sebastian finally arrived at the Hawke Estate and was shown by faithful Bodahn to the kitchen, Merrill was already there, chattering away and skimming through the various cookbooks either left behind by her mother or purchased for Orana. She never finished reading any of the recipes all the way through and Hawke, who had found herself a cross-legged seat on an out of the way countertop, had given up on trying to count the number of pages summarily flipped through and sat in silence, smoking. An aromatic herb mixture that Merrill made up for she and Varric every once in a while, it smelled sweet and was pleasant tasting, but more than anything it gave her something to do with her hands while she ‘supervised’.

Sebastian had promised to teach the elf how to make some kind of sweet bread they made in Starkhaven with potatoes and honey so long as they could make enough to hand out to some of the needy children that the brothers and sisters of the Chantry ministered to. Neither had adequate space for cooking, Sebastian lacking a kitchen entirely and Merrill making do with a small wood stove useful really only for boiling water, and so they ended up in Hawke’s with regularity. And why Hawke ended up repeatedly paying for the ingredients for their little cooking adventures, she would never know.

Oh, wait. Because Merrill was pickpocketed almost daily, and Sebastian had made vows about pesky things like poverty and chastity. That was why.

She didn’t mind really; even though she made a point of grousing about the way the kitchen was almost always a little more destroyed every time they did this (Merrill, who could brew a mean cup of tea, was not a very good cook) it helped to fill up the depressing emptiness in her house. Plus she’d learn the recipe herself by watching and making generally unhelpful comments, and then teach it to Orana later, whom she couldn’t bear to be gruff or sharp with in the slightest.

“We thought you might still be coming,” she said to Sebastian as he rolled up his sleeves with little more than a brief nod in her direction, her eyebrow arching as he paused in setting down the jar of honey that was his contribution to the endeavor and flushed a bright red.  Odd.

“You shouldn’t do that,” was all he said in response, gesturing toward her small pipe. “It’s not good for you.”

Hawke exhaled a stream of fragrant smoke and laughed. “You can add it to the list I’m sure you’re making of all my wicked ways.”

She did not think it was possible for Sebastian to turn any redder but he did and this time even Merrill noticed, reaching a floured hand up to his forehead as though checking for a fever. It left an endearing smudge behind which the priest rubbed at with a bared forearm, bereft of his armor today, and then focused an impressive amount of his attention on counting out eggs.

They chattered back and forth amongst themselves as they worked, and Hawke puttered with various things (mostly involving opening and shutting the cabinets and needlessly rearranging things here and there), finding that to be rather more interesting than the pair of them peeling potatoes. 

“Oven’s ready,” she said eventually with an eye to the embers beneath it. They never asked how she knew, just taking it for granted that she was right about it (she was). Her friends weren’t terribly observant, and she didn’t think a single one of them had ever seen her cook anything more complex than a spitted rabbit over a campfire. That was fine with her; baking was something she did on her own time, when the Champion of Kirkwall could put an apron on and be sure that no one nosier than her household staff would interrupt her.

Of course the first pan of whatever they were cooking invariably ended up on the floor – that’s how it usually went. This time it was because Merrill burned herself trying to put the bread in the oven.

“Careless,” she commented unsupportively, crossing the kitchen to grab the offended hand and examine the burned digit critically. “You can throw fire around like it’s nothing, and you still manage to hurt yourself constantly. Explain that to me.” It was a rhetorical question of course but Merrill felt compelled to explain anyway and Hawke shook her head with impatience, popping the injured finger into her mouth to wet it and blowing on it gently to cool the irritated skin before she could think better of it.

They were both staring at her now and she couldn’t help but feel defensive and a little bit hostile. “What? My mother used to do that when we got hurt in the kitchen. I’m not a complete bastar-.”

Unexpectedly Merrill interlaced slim fingers with hers and gave her a tug, lifting up onto the tips of her toes to press her lips to Hawke’s, cutting her short.

For the second time in as many days, Hawke was speechless. She’d spent the last five or six years without more than a friendly peck on the cheek, and now all of a sudden everybody was lining up to kiss her. It wasn’t like she was complaining - far be it from her to look a gift kiss in the mouth (...or something...) - but she was at a loss for what she might be doing different to make her suddenly more appealing.

It had been a quiet few weeks and some of the scratches on her face from their last fight with slavers had healed, maybe that was it. Or her new soap. Yeah, probably the soap. That made sense, kind of.  If it was made of pheromones.

But really it didn’t matter, because (other than a brief pause when the little elf had pulled back long enough to blink wide, innocent looking eyes up at her) Merrill was still kissing her. The soft lips that fluttered against hers were braver than she could have dared to be, and when sharp little teeth pulled at her lower lip she forgot all about the oven and the dough on the floor and the fact that Sebastian was still even in the room and found herself making a sound unfamiliar to her save for on those lonely nights she spent curled up in bed by herself.

She moaned against Merrill’s mouth and was rewarded with a quick thrust of an agile tongue that sought out her own and reminded her just how it was that kissing was done. She was out of practice, she must be, but Merrill didn’t seem to mind. She had twined her hands into the fabric of Hawke’s shirt and was using it pull her down to her level, mouth slanting for access. Harder, more insistent, a tangle of tongues and lips and sharp nipping teeth. She hadn’t even realized that she’d backed Merrill against the wide table in the middle of the room until she’d moved to pick the elven woman up by the hips and set her on top of it and was stopped.

“I want to show you, Mari,” she said, and for the life of her Hawke couldn’t figure out what she meant, her mind far too clouded with this sudden pulse of need that screamed _I want, I want, I want_ over and over in her mind. “My _vallaslin_ ,” she said, and stripped her belt away, letting it fall unheeded to the floor with a clank and a thud. “All of it.”

In any normal situation, Hawke would never have allowed herself to get so caught up in the moment. Generally speaking she could be relied upon to keep her head on straight, to stay in control and impartial and detached, but not today. If Fenris were here he would punch her in the face and lecture her about the dangers of blood magic – fortunately he wasn’t, because she wasn’t sure if she could articulate her desires enough to reasonably explain that blood had nothing to do with anything, aside from that it was rushing in her ears and pulsing to the surface of her skin to make her lips feel swollen and wanton and bruised.

She wondered briefly what the others would think if they knew what was going on in her kitchen – Maker, in her _body_ – right now, but when Merrill had skillfully shrugged out of her tunic and leggings and was standing naked and radiant before her and unselfconsciously working the knot out of the scarf wound at her neck, she decided she didn’t care. That she couldn’t care. That it just wasn’t possible.

“They’re like vines,” Merrill was murmuring in her ear, in a soft voice that made her think of the tender green shoots of leaves being ruffled in the spring, the words oddly familiar. “Twining around the trunk of a tree.”

“Beautiful,” she said, sounding unlike herself, and slid her arms around Merrill’s slim waist as her mouth fell to brush against the gracefully pointed ears and the long slender neck that were both so quintessentially elven, so foreign and exotic and enthrallingly befuddling. She was afraid to hold the elf too hard, too conscious of her greater size and strength, the roughness of her hands, but Merrill seemed to suffer under no such compunctions. She took Hawke’s hand in hers and laid it against the gentle swell of her breast, leaning up to steal more of those soft, lingering kisses as her clever fingers worked to undo the buckle of her belt and the laces at the front of her trousers.

She’d never been with a woman, not strictly. It was assumed that she and Isabela slept together because every once in a while the Rivaini pirate would end up passed out drunk on her floor (or if she was feeling generous, in her bed while Hawke slept in a chair). Even Isabela was under the impression that something ought to have happened between them at some point by sheer factors of probability, and Hawke never disabused her of the notion. And if Isabela was going to make up stories and tell tales about their theoretically epic exploits in the bedroom department, fine. That was part of the package deal that came with being mascot of an entire city.

But that wasn’t the point. The point was that Merrill’s clever fingers had managed to work Hawke’s close-fitting trousers down to somewhere around her ankles and was holding them for her to step out of. She did as she was bid, the faintly nervous fluttering in her stomach making her sway unsteadily until a pair of strong, warm arms folded around her from behind and steadied her.

Sebastian. Oh. She would recognize that scent anywhere, the smell of wood shavings and incense and linseed oil, and for a moment she was so embarrassed at having acted this way in front of him that she was almost overcome with the urge to bolt. She stopped short, though, when Merrill pulled her discarded pants away and Sebastian’s strong, clever hands reached to twine into the front of her shirt and pull it up over her head.

“The tally of your wickedness is a lengthy one indeed,” he spoke softly into her ear, the raw edge to his fluid voice making her hips twitch involuntarily. 

She reached for him instinctually, wanting to taste the lips that shaped his voice into such alluring words, but he trapped her arms behind her before she could, holding them tight enough that her back arched and her body bent like a bow, thrusting her breasts toward Merrill. One of his hands, the same hands she could picture him clasping in prayer, threaded through the short dark locks of her hair at the crown of her head and pulled it back against his shoulder. She craned her neck to look at him but was held still, treated only to a partial view of his chin and his mouth.

His jaw was set, teeth on edge and lips slightly parted, and she could feel the silk of his shirt pressed against her bare shoulders. Behind her, above her – she wanted to touch him, wanted to slide her palms up over the hard planes of his chest, but he held her fast. 

Maker, they were trying to kill her. She felt like she couldn’t breathe, chest constricting as Merrill’s soft touch slid its way up the outsides of her thighs, shaping her hips and the curve of her waist beneath it. Cool, slender fingers slid over the flat plane of her stomach. Hot, hard hands held her in place. Merrill’s tongue darted out to sweep between her breasts, dragging up over her sternum and behind her Sebastian groaned, the sound reverberating against her face where it pressed against his throat.

“Is this what you think about at night, alone in your bed? Do you slide the silk of your sheets over your body and imagine that it’s her touch? That it’s mine?” He was whispering to her, low and dark, and her face flushed perilously hot. How did he _know_ these things? Asking Andraste was an unfair advantage.

She wasn’t certain if she should answer – if she even _could_ answer – and so she didn’t. It didn’t seem to be required anyhow; soon enough Merrill’s mouth was working its way across her chest, outlining the ridges of her collarbones with tongue and dragging teeth, and Sebastian held her harder against him, body trembling with tension. “You are a very wicked girl, aren’t you Marian.” She made a small sound, an involuntary sound, and he gave her a little shake. “Say it.”

“Maker yes, I am a very wicked girl.” It spilled out of her all in a rush, her voice sounding unfamiliar, coming out like a sigh.

Merrill looked up at Sebastian from over Marian’s shoulder and she could feel him nod, the freshly-shaven skin of his face soft against her temple.

“Punish her.”

She almost came right then, and almost fell, but Sebastian drug her back to her feet and held her up. Cool, slender fingers traced lines across her body, covered now in something thick and sticky. It glistened off her skin in streaks that wound circles around her breasts, painted trails down her sides and along her hips, even gracing her thighs, perilously close to their juncture. She could recognize the sweet almost floral scent of honey, could taste it when a slim finger was lifted to her mouth and she closed her lips around it, suckling the sweetness from Merrill’s flesh.

“I’m going to give you _vallaslin_ ,” she said softly, running the pad of her thumb over Marian’s lower lip. “It’s a test. If you make any sounds, I’ll have to stop.”

Marian bit her tongue. That sounded like punishment enough.

There weren’t proper words to describe the way it felt when Merrill’s deft pink tongue slide agilely across her skin, collecting the viscous honey on its tip. Sharp darts alternated with broad lapping strokes, and when her mouth closed around one of Marian’s straining nipples, it was all she could do not to moan out loud, clamping her mouth shut with fervor and squeezing her eyes closed. A tremor passed through her body from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes and Sebastian shook her again with the arm that pinned her hands. 

“Open your eyes,” he demanded. “Watch.”

Merrill’s tongue laved the peak of her breast, flicking against its pebbled tip before moving lower to press her mouth against the glimmering trails limned in honey that curled along Marian’s side. The light touch both tickled and teased, and when her knees shook at the contrast of Merrill’s clever pink tongue against her own pale skin, she gathered her hands into the loose fabric of Sebastian’s shirt where she could feel it behind her.

Long, slender fingers brushed against the damp curls between her thighs and involuntarily her hips jerked forward, chasing the sensation. The hand was withdrawn to close instead around the top of her thigh and she very nearly lost control of herself, teeth grinding together and breathing in quickened pants through her nose, unwilling to so much as swallow for fear of what sound she might make.

Sebastian’s hand came down to settle without any real gentleness over her mouth and her lips pressed the callused palm of his hand, any whisper she might have made hushed against his skin. Both a blessing and a curse; her silence was bought at the cost of the heady urge to sink her teeth into him, to suck one of those strong, clever fingers into her mouth. Even today, bereft of his armor and in the clothing he wore in casual company, his skin smelled of leather. New fantasies roiled in her mind; Sebastian and she, wound all around each other on the floor of his Chantry cell, her hands bound together with a bowstring as Andraste looked on in blessing.

He tilted her head downward, hand still clasped over her mouth, aiming the arrow of her attention toward Merrill’s bowed head, hovering just over the junction of her thighs, mouth pressed hot against her skin and suckling hard enough to turn Marian’s white skin pink beneath it. Sebastian shifted behind her, one of his booted feet nudging her ankles further apart. She complied, grateful for his hand against her lips once more as Merrill breathed against her and she could feel the elf’s warm, damp exhalation against her core.

They couldn’t know what that did to her, the thoughts and feelings that it stirred. Merrill’s slender body crouched at her feet, the graceful lines of _vallaslin_ curling around her limbs like, what was it she had said? _Like vines around the trunk of a tree._ Those words resonated with her, deep down, as though this were a dream she once had coming to life before her eyes.

Her mouth came down against Marian’s aching, craving flesh and she knew the elf would find her slick and wanton. It both shamed and elated her, and Sebastian must have felt somewhat the same for she felt him shudder where her shoulders pressed to his chest, her hands pinned between them against the flat plane of his stomach. She wanted to slide them down his body, to trespass the confines of his trousers to curl her fingers around the hardness of the arousal that she was sure must be there, but he gripped her wrists until they hurt.

“You are so beautiful,” he rasped out against her ear as Merrill’s tongue sunk deep and parted her lips in the most intimate kiss Marian could ever imagine. There was nothing she could do to tear her eyes away from the top of her head, dark locks shining in the morning light, the tapered points of her ears sharp and graceful. “Your body is sacred. Holy. You will treat it better.”

She could only nod in blind agreement, willing to submit to whatever commandment he might issue down to her if it meant only that this wouldn’t stop, that it would continue until her whole body was drenched in sweat and she shattered like a mirror.

Her hips worked endlessly, the strong muscles in her stomach tightening almost to the point of pain as one slender finger pressed inside of her, stirring in the hot slickness that poured to coat her thighs and followed soon by a second. 

She was no virgin despite her years of self- and circumstance-enforced solitude, but she had never been trapped in her pleasure before. Merrill grasped her hip with one hand, short nails digging into the muscle there as Sebastian forced her upright, holding her that way when her body wanted to curl in on itself, straining toward the breaking point. His hand slid down away from her mouth and she took a deep gulping breath as the calluses on his fingers and palms and the smooth skin in between swept down over her chin to close with constrained roughness around her throat. He guided her body back against him and her eyes toward the ceiling, wringing supplication out of her with the tightness of his grasp that turned each breath into a gasped prayer and made her float light-headed on an endless wave of pleasure.

Merrill’s fingers pumped into her, her tongue lapped and curled against her, and Sebastian held her, unrelenting until she broke with a cry that was almost a scream for the effort of holding every other sound back. They caught her as her legs went out and held her between the two of them, heedless of the sticky damp of her skin.

**

The bread was a little less sweet for want of honey when she finished its baking, later, alone again in her kitchen. But she made do.


	4. Anger, Fear and Desperation

He was surprised when the letter stamped with the Amell family crest fell out of the bottom of the stack of correspondence delivered to his doorstep by one of Varric’s lackeys. He had his mail, such as it was, sent to the Hanged Man because, after all, it wasn’t as though he could afford to advertise his address as ‘Anders, at the free (illegal) clinic in Darktown run by the free (illegal) mage’. He thought that might sort of end in a visit from the Knight-Commander herself with an eviction notice in hand, along with a coupon for one free Rite of Tranquility.

Really, who could blame him for screening his messages.

Hawke never wrote him. No, that wasn’t fair. Hawke wrote him often, but usually it was under the crushing guise of red inked edits to his manifesto. True, it was probably his fault because he kept sending them to her.  Or sneaking them into the shelves of her bookcase.  Or into her desk.  Or other less likely places when she decided she’d had enough of him for any given day and flung the pages back in his face, storming off and leaving him to wearily harvest the fruits of his labor from the floor.

As much as he wanted to strangle her sometimes, she had valid points – even if she did drive them home with all of the subtly of a brick thrown through a stained-glass window. That was why he couldn’t bring himself to hate the totality of her, and why Justice wouldn’t allow it even if he wanted to; even if her intention was only to bait him until he shouted at her or tore all of his hair out, she’d inadvertently helped his movement, honing his arguments like the fine edge of her sword-blade.

It hadn’t always been this way, though. He’d seen her knock a templar’s teeth through the back of his helmet for daring to threaten her sister, and once, long ago, she’d stepped between him, Justice and all, and the knights of the Chantry with her shield raised. That was the night Karl died. And now Bethany was gone too, which made the memories all the more bittersweet.

Then her mother had been killed, and she’d slain the Arishok, and Meredith and Orsino had turned her into a pawn in the lethal chess game between them. It really wasn’t surprising that she would be sick of magic, or feel the stain of it on her heart. But, even still, she never actually came out and said that she hated him, and he knew – and Justice knew – that the only reason they were allowed to operate with even a modicum of freedom in this city was because of her protection.

He supposed that’s why he was so damned conflicted over this woman, why he never knew if he wanted to kiss her or kill her, or both. Reading what she’d sent him made that in no way easier.

**

He didn’t like strangers poking around the manor, be it guardsmen, templars, tax collectors or postmen, but Varric was good enough to keep his correspondence for him. The dwarf, also, was the first of his newfound friends in Kirkwall to know that Fenris couldn’t read. Varric had never asked, never pressed, and it had been a secret between the two of them until Hawke had come along and smashed into his deficiency like a fist. She’d barreled right through his protests too, like a booted foot kicking a locked door wide open.

He could recall the events of that night with startling accuracy in the face of his persistent amnesia about all that had come before Danarius. Hawke tended to have that impression on people, on him certainly, which was only one of the many reasons he’d come up with to stay himself every time a shadow memory or a hunter ambush would have his blood screaming at him to run.

He hadn’t wanted to touch it, the Book of Shartan that she’d held out in offering without a second thought. He thought he’d ruin it somehow, not trusting himself to lay claim to any possessions aside from his arms and armor because slaves did not own property.  Even as a free man the thought was discomfiting in the face of how little he required to survive. He had no great urge to own things without a particular usefulness, to have them just to have them, but he owned that book now, and many others.

“Just take the fucking book, Fenris,” she’d said eventually when her head canted from the left side (which meant she was confused) to the right (which meant she was thinking about hitting someone). He had no idea why these small traits stuck in his thoughts but he had listed them, catalogued them in his mind long before he could ever begin to dream of doing so on paper.

“It’s just… slaves are not permitted to read.”

“Well if I see any, I’ll be sure to let them know.” 

“I never learned,” he finally admitted, antagonized by himself, by how his voice sounded tentative. Embarrassed. Ashamed. He’d learned to be careful in his words with Hawke because, like himself, she had a tendency to dig her fingers into all the spots that hurt. He did it on purpose - for her it was just collateral damage on the quickest and most direct path to the point. The only reason they hadn’t killed each other all these long years was that they made each other laugh more than they made each other angry.

And they needed each other. Or at least he liked to think so.

“So learn,” she’d said, and had thrown the book at him so he’d have no choice but to catch it or let it fall on the floor. “I’ll teach you.” He looked at her blankly as he’d fumbled for the tome, unsettled by the casual way she handled it and trying despite himself not to scratch its cover with his gauntlets. She’d narrowed her eyes at him. “If I can teach Carver, I can teach you. He was a bigger idiot than you are, anyway.”

They’d sat in front of the fireplace with the book and a bottle of wine, but she didn’t teach him that night. He wouldn’t let her. Instead, they talked about the brother whom he’d never met and whom she rarely spoke of, and whom she clearly missed even through her complaints and hard comments.

But the next night, and the one after that, they read.

That was why he wasn’t really surprised to receive her letter – it wasn’t the first by far. Their missives were a private celebration between the two of them over his progress; something that no one else understood or could use to create untoward gossip that would only serve to irritate them both. The only one who might understand the significance of these randomly left messages was the mage whom he knew shared with her something similar, Hawke taking hours out of her day bothering to read every version of that damned manifesto.

That was why, when he read the letter, it felt like such a betrayal.

He had to see Hawke, immediately, and give voice to all of the words building up in his throat before they became an incoherent scream. But first, first he had to kill Anders.

**

Anders didn’t know if he should necessarily be surprised when Fenris burst angrily into his clinic naught but an hour after he’d finished reading (and rereading) Hawke’s letter. 

That was Fenris. Always angrily bursting into places. Always bursting, really, as though all of the hostility inside him was just too big for his body.

In that way at least Anders sort of understood him, but it really didn’t seem to matter. Most days he liked Fenris even less than he liked Hawke, and there was never any doubt about the measure of the elf’s dislike of him, unlike with her.

Fenris threw a punch that glanced against his cheek as he hurriedly backpedaled, getting out of the way before the elf could take his head off. If he were a nicer person he might have had compunctions about using magic against someone so biased against it, but he didn’t and he wasn’t. Some carefully applied force created a barrier between them, shoving Fenris back against the wall hard enough to rattle the glass jars and vials he kept in the cupboard that, ironically enough, Hawke and Bethany had built for him. 

Something teetered and fell, and the sound of shattering glass made them both stop. It was too bad really; Anders might not have minded spitefully setting the elf’s hair aflame, and for once Hawke wasn’t here to pull them apart.

“What is your problem?” he demanded, ending the spell and shrugging his feathered pauldrons back into a tattered semblance of order. “Or rather, what is your problem _today_?”

“I don’t know what you’ve done, or how you got her to do it, but I’m warning you mage. Stay away from her.”

“What in Maker’s name are you even talking about?” Anders demanded, folding his arms irritably across his chest as Fenris shoved away from the wall and, rather than advance on him again, was stalking back and forth across the room like a caged animal. “As much as I love being assaulted in my own home-”

“Cease your endless prattling, mage,” Fenris snarled, and yanked a semi-crumpled piece of paper from inside his jerkin, brandishing it at Anders as though he’d stab him with it if he could. “Are you really going to pretend you had nothing to do with this?”

Even from where he was standing he could see the red sealing wax Hawke used on her correspondence. There was a sinking feeling in his gut and then a rush of nonsensical hope followed by another faintly queasy sensation, over and over until he wasn’t quite sure how he felt. From the awkward humming in the back of his mind, neither did Justice.

Neither of them cared much for Fenris, however. That at least they could agree on.

“Oh, you mean this?” Anders shot back, retrieving the letter he’d received from his pocket. “Yeah, I got one too.” A stunned and faintly uncertain expression flashed over Fenris’ features and he laughed, unable to keep from gloating just a little. Bloody self-righteous elf. “I actually think this one might be for you.  That would make more sense.”

Fenris looked down at the parchment he was clutching in both hands, and Anders cringed a little to hear the sound of the paper crumpling against the elf’s metal gauntlets. “You didn’t write this?” It sounded more like an accusation than a question. Anders shrugged and saw his green eyes narrow. “Give it to me.”

“Give me mine first.”

“No. Give me the letter, _then-_ ”

“What’s to stop me from just tearing-”

“Give me the damned letter!”

“Alright fine, fine. Same time.”

The letters were extended tentatively, suspiciously, and Anders grabbed for his in the same split second that Fenris ripped the one he was holding out of his hand. Like fighters in a ring they retreated to opposite corners of the clinic, Anders finding himself a perch on one of the cots and Fenris once more stalking the length of the small enclosure.

_I hate those damned feathered pauldrons. I well and truly cannot stand them. I know he thinks they’re stylish (though what someone like him who lives in what is tantamount to a hole in the ground cares for being fashionable, I do not know), but I cannot help but think he looks like a great, awkward bird flapping its wings every time he so much as shrugs._

_Thanks Hawke_ , he thought, shooting a suspicious glare at Fenris who was pacing and muttering to himself across the room. The next line nearly made him choke.

_I wonder if he knows that I think about taking them off of him._

_I watch him sometimes, when he’s talking with Varric or arguing with Fenris, or working in his clinic, or doing any number of things, and try to figure out how all of his clothing is held together. Robes are not like armor, and yet the things he chooses to wear are not so different in function than what I put on each morning. They are protection, barriers._

_I have never been much of one for walls I am forbidden to climb, and in that he and I are very much the same._

_I wonder, in these times that I watch him and he doesn’t realize it (or he does, and he glares at me like I am plotting his execution), what he would do if I were to push him against the cellar wall or the door of his clinic and press my nose and lips to the hollow of his throat and inhale his scent without the feathers. Or even if I were to pull him unsubtly into a room at the Hanged Man the way Isabela does with her beaus, push him down onto a bed where countless others have slept before, and explore all the myriad ways, the buckles and belts and clasps, that his clothing is held together._

_How would he look at me, I wonder, if I were to rip them all away and make a pyre of his boots and robes and clothe him instead in my skin, in my touch and arms, and the weight of my body?_

_There are times, many times, I would like to feel his strength, knowing that mine is likely greater. I would like to feel his muscles tense and strain beneath me as I bridge his hips with my thighs and he thrusts up and into me, lifting us both from the bed until we fly. I would like to feel his hands on me, hard on my arms and desperate, because he always seems so desperate._

_And I, I would like to see him writhe desperately beneath me were I to pin his hands above his head and take him savagely in vengeance for every damned word of that manifesto now imprinted on my mind. Then, for once, I could demand that he sear me with a passion that has nothing to do with the Circle, make him burn with something other than rebellion, and hear him utter my name for once in a way that does not sound like an indictment…_

The letter ended with a smudge of ink, the last sentence unreadable; another unsatisfactory ending to add to the many others in his life. This one though, at least, had some sort of potential.

**

_He is so angry.  It’s something about him that I like best._

_Not the anger, not exactly, but the passion behind it._

_He drives an elbow into my stomach and I whip my fist across his cheek, and when it is over we can both stand back, panting and sweating and pleased with ourselves, to grin in each other’s bruised faces. And then we drink, because that’s what warriors do. And we don’t talk about it because we don’t have to, and because he believes as I do that pain drives out weakness; even if he won’t admit it._

_Fenris fights with sword and with fists and with words and the expression on his face. That is something I can appreciate. Isabela appreciates it too, and from the stories she tells he requires neither weapons nor armor to do battle. She is happy to tell me much, much more, and she does, but that is the only part I am interested in because I, like he, am not of a temperament to share._

_I try not to think about it when we train together, tumbling around one another like vicious beasts, about what it would like for him to belong to me. Not in the way that he is accustomed to, but in the way that lovers belong to one another, equally possessive._

_But more than anything, when I knock him off his feet and topple him to the floor and he grabs my wrists, or when he pins me on my stomach and drives a knee into my back, I try not to think about what it would be like to belong to him._

_It is easy, when I am alone and I wash both his sweat and mine from my skin, to imagine other ways, other endings, than the one where we toast each other, I clap him on the shoulder, and leave. It is far too easy in fact, and I cannot help but tease with bets against myself about how quickly he could strip me of my armor, familiar with it as he is. Or better, and worse, the extent of the lyrium that makes him hateful and so beautiful._

_Isabela will tell me, tries to, but I tell her no. I’d rather wonder, draw him in pictures in my mind if I am not ever to see it for myself._

_These images I create, these pictures, sometimes, often, are more than enough. But still, I cannot picture him as anything other than what he is; proud, aggressive, untamed. Mean too, but in all of the right ways. A man who has no fear for me, who is not afraid to push me down, to twist my arm, to pin me and pull my hair, because he knows I won’t break; that he won’t break me. A man with serious eyes and ungentle hands and still, a man to be trusted at my back._

_I think about that sometimes, alone in the red of my firelight. I imagine the dig of his fingers into my hips and leave the marks of nails there myself, and I lie on my stomach and pretend that the heaviness of the sheets and covers is the weight of his body, holding me down and still and ready. I can only imagine, though, that he would be warmer and better than blankets…_

The room was too small all of a sudden, or maybe that was the constriction of his armor around his chest, feeling as though it was suddenly ill-fit for his frame.

Across the room the mage stood from where he’d been seated and Fenris could not help but look at him suspiciously as he hovered, staring at nothing, and then stepped toward the door.

In that moment, with Hawke’s words still floating before his eyes and in his mind and crumpled in his fist, it made him furious. He _knew_ what she had written about Anders, had read it as clearly as he had the things she’d written about _him_. And she was right, about many things, but especially about his temperament.

He put a hand out to stop the mage from leaving, and Anders shook him off with a look of annoyance, preening his feathers. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to see Hawke.”

“Not bloody likely. _I’m_ going to see Hawke.”

“Not if I get there first.”

**

Her first thought this morning, once the others had left, was to curl up in her wide bathtub and to sink deep in the water until nothing but her head and hands and a book were left unsubmerged and _not think about it_. She’d succeeded in part, filling the tub with steaming water and bathing her skin with a strange newfound kind of reverence; she couldn’t seem to read though. How could she be expected to concentrate on a book when it felt so much like she was in one? 

She should have known it wouldn’t be over; there was nothing about what happened earlier that day in her kitchen that felt like an ending.

At the same time, she wasn’t exactly expecting a plot twist to burst into her bathroom, either.

The door flew open with a crash that had her diving instinctually over the edge of the tub for cover and a weapon. A feathered blur sprinted into the room at a dead run, mid-sentence, head craned back to look behind him.

“Anders?”

There was a snarl and a string of cusswords in a language that registered after a second as Arcanum, and before she knew it a bundle of white hair and black leather leapt from in the hallway beyond her line of sight and tackled Anders to the ground.

“Fenris?!”

Not a moment behind them was Bodahn (clutching a maul in both hands), Sandal (clapping his hands and laughing), Orana (holding a frying pan as though it was something strange she found under a bed while cleaning), and Toothless, who cocked his canine head to one side and slobbered predictably.

“Oh for fuck’s sake.” Hawke dropped her sword with an irritable sigh and reached for her robe instead, waving Bodahn and the others away. “It’s alright, I’ll deal with this.”

Bodahn, who had seen her stripped down and on the verge of bleeding out too many times to be unsettled at the sight of her merely naked and standing in a puddle of bathwater, didn’t blanch or budge. “Are you sure, messere?” he asked loyally, eyeing the struggling, cussing pile of her companions on the floor with something like distrust.

“I’m sure. Thank you.”

 _Maker’s bleeding syphilitic balls_ , she groused to herself as she shrugged on her robe and knotted the belt in front with a sharp, irritable jerk. She had no idea how these things got started and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Anders and Fenris had somehow regained their feet and both seemed intent on choking each other to a slow mutual death rather than ending the scuffle summarily either with magic, fade-spirit or a glowing fist through the chest. She was almost of a mind to let them.

“Enough,” she commanded, managing to get between them long enough to fling Fenris against the wall and to hold Anders at bay with one hand knotted in the neck of his robe. “Enough! What is _wrong_ with you two?” 

There was a long moment of tense silence and she sighed.  “You both need to-”

A hand closed hard around the belt of her robe and yanked; she stumbled, caught off-guard and nearly dragging Anders down too with the hand that was tangled up in his clothes. But it was he who pulled her, and all of a sudden she was caught up in arms that wrapped themselves around her waist and pulled her in close until the whole front of her body was pressed against his torso. 

Startled she leaned back faintly and looked up at him, head canting in confusion as her eyes searched his face for some kind of clue she felt must be written there. His eyes were a lighter shade of brown than she’d realized, seeming golden in the light with little flecks of green along their edges that made them almost hazel. Pretty eyes; pretty and intense and – _so that’s what Isabela means when she says ‘smolder’_. And then he was kissing her and there was no more time for such trivial, pesky things as thoughts. 

Kissing Anders was like… she didn’t know. Different than kissing Aveline; different than kissing Merrill. Anders grasped her like he thought she was going to disappear, his hold around her lifting her almost onto the tips of her toes as he hauled her up against him.

His lips were not soft, rough with stubble, and they met hers with a kind of frantic desperation that had her gasping. He took advantage of her parted lips to skillfully dart between them and almost involuntarily her head tilted further, slanting her mouth to a better angle as he skillfully plied her tongue with his.

 _Elfroot_ , she thought hazily, distracted by his unfamiliar taste. _Elfroot and embrium._

And then it was different again, changing with dizzying speed. A cold metal hand closed hard around her upper arm and yanked, spinning her out of Anders’ warm arms and away from his soft robes and the tickling smell of feathers to hem her against the wall. Fenris braced his arms to either side of her head and _leaned_ , taking her lips in a kiss so hard and sudden that her head smacked back against the stone.

Fenris.

This kiss had teeth, lower lip seized between sharp incisors and tugged until she lifted her chin. She felt the clawed fingertips of his gauntlet scrape against the back of her neck as his hand found purchase in her hair, holding her close and still with just that one touch. It was she, incomprehensibly, who lifted her hands to lay flat against his chest, surprised by the cold, rigid plate of his chestpiece, having expected - or wanted - to find his warm, bare skin instead.

_Green eyes. White hair. Wine. Lyrium. Fenris._

She was being turned again and Fenris turned with her, leaving her caught somewhere between his body and Anders’ as the mage took her chin and brought her mouth back to his. Feeling the danger even through the hazy need, the _I want I want I want_ that again seemed to so easily curl up through her from the tips of her toes, she hooked a hand to grasp the top of Fenris’ breastplate and tangled her fingers in Anders’ belt, holding them apart as much as she was holding them together.

She didn’t know what would happen next any more than she could tell what either of them were thinking when Anders pulled away and flicked his eyes to Fenris’ face. Something silent and significant passed between them, a challenge mutually issued and accepted.

Anders laughed, something that didn’t happen as much these days as it used to, and brought his mouth to hers as Fenris took her shoulders and turned her so that her back rested against his solid form. Anders kissed her and Fenris held her and she hung on for dear life, one hand on Fenris’ arm and the other on the shoulder of the mage who was doing an alarmingly good job of sending her thoughts into a tailspin that led ultimately nowhere.

Her lower lip was suckled and trapped once more, tenderly this time, between a set of teeth, and she was dimly aware of the shoulder of her robe being tugged aside and another mouth finding purchase at the curve of her neck. She was divested of the garment by some unspoken agreement, the hastily tied knot in its belt undone by deft hands as the thin red cloth was pulled from her shoulders. It tangled around her elbows and trapped her arms against her sides; a small thrill of anxiety unexpectedly wound through her before the garment was discarded and Fenris put an arm around her waist to do nothing but hold her. She leaned gratefully against him, shivering only momentarily at the cold press of the ridges of his breastplate against her, the metal already warming to her body.

Anders swept his kisses lower, nipping at her chin and following the line of her jaw, down the curve of her throat and to the top of her chest where the tip of his tongue darted against the ridges of her collarbones. Marian turned her head to meet Fenris’ mouth again, his hand reaching to curve against her cheek. The metal gauntlets he wore to protect his hands and forearms had not been removed, and the threateningly sharp tips at each finger scored tingling lines along the side of her neck and into her hair.

She hissed against Fenris’ mouth as Anders lips found her breast, closing wet and hot around her pebbled nipple, and gasped when its twin was trapped between his fingers. Her skin tingled, buzzing with a pleasant intensity that shot sensation straight to the core of her, and when her hips jerked forward of their own accord it increased until she bit down on Fenris’ lower lip to stifle a moan.

The electricity trick. She hated when Isabela was right, but when she was right – Maker, she was _right_. 

The warmth of Anders’ mouth moved lower, hovering against the flat plane of her belly, and Fenris’ hand moved to replace it at her breasts, scoring faintly stinging trails between them as it moved up from her navel. There was a clang of metal against the stone floor and suddenly the hand that filled itself with one of her breasts was all warm flesh and strong fingers, hotter even where the graceful lines of lyrium crossed his palm. Another hand slid its way up the outside of her thigh from below, tracing the curve of her hip and waist and laying itself over the bare hand on her breast, and Fenris shifted behind her, bracing her against him as Anders eased her thighs further apart and buried his mouth between them.

Startling herself with the sudden sound that escaped her, she flushed and bit down on her lip until Fenris closed his teeth around her earlobe and tugged less than gently. “Don’t,” he said, and she thought she might implode right there, caught up in the husky sound of his voice. “We want to hear you. Tell us.”

We. Us. She had never imagined that this would happen, not in six years worth of nights spent alone in her bed, making up stories for herself. But this was better, so much better, because this was real.

This was real or she was crazy.

And there was also something very wrong with this situation too, but the power to make it stop seemed just out of her grasp – and her desire. Ironic that a pair of hungry mouths could defeat the Champion of Kirkwall when blood mages and the Qunari could not.

She could feel Anders tip his head up and couldn’t help the low sound that resonated deep in her throat as his lips closed around the little needy knot of nerves between her legs that all but begged for attention. Fingers slid up her thighs, slick in the wetness that had gathered there, and pushed inside her, filling and stretching her unpracticed body in a way she’d almost forgotten. Anders’ fingers were different than Merrill’s had been, longer and thicker, and again her body buzzed with a careful application of energy, making her hips twist and everything inside her clench pleasurably around those digits.

There were so many hands on her body that she was starting to lose track of which belonged to whom and what they were even doing to wind her up so tight, make her feel like a spring coiled with tension. It was all sensation – _warm hands, sharp teeth, thrusting fingers, scratching, licking, sucking, pinching, thrumming_ – until a touch that went supernaturally from hot to icy brought her a moment of clarity before she pitched headlong over a precipice and into the abyss of release.

She tangled her hand in Anders’ hair and tugged, bringing his mouth away from her skin and his head up. There was a look of something that was almost hurt in his eyes, a sort of quiet despair that pulled her up short in whatever idiotic thing she had been about to say and made her _think._

“Come here,” she ordered, her voice coming out more sharply than she’d meant it to, and straightened up enough to stand rather than lean. Fenris’ arms loosened from around her, his hands coming down to hover on her hips as Anders stepped toward her with uncharacteristic obedience. She pulled him down into another kiss; she could taste herself on his lips, sharp and sweet and familiar, and he moaned against her, his hands coming up to clutch her shoulders.

Easing faintly back her hands moved to unclasp his belt and began the long process that was _undressing Anders_ , a map to which she’d long since formed in her mind. It was complicated, but so was her armor, and when his hands lifted to take over she gave him a little shake. “Stop,” she commanded and he did, arms easing down to hang uncertainly at his sides. 

To see the way his hands worked against the air, fingers curling and clenching into fists, she would have been less surprised at a sudden surge of Justice than at the desperate way he pulled her to him when she’d stripped him naked, crushing her against the breadth of his chest. He’d gotten leaner these long years, muscles turning wiry and he looked almost too thin. _Stupid mage_ , she sighed internally as her fingers took the path of the ridged scar on his chest that marred the skin over his heart. _Doesn’t take care of himself._

Anders looked at something over her shoulder and hazily she realized that Fenris’ hands had slowly crept from her hips. She turned in time to see the expression on his face shift to grudging acknowledgement from something like a cat with ears laid back, about to hiss and swipe its claws across someone’s face. Incomprehensibly she felt a pang of something very like guilt but he was far too good at holding a neutral expression, and it persisted stoically when she took his hand and pulled him away from the wall, guiding him to sit down on the wide bench that held a basket of towels and bottles and her discarded clothing.

She reached for the buckles that secured his breastplate, sinking down to kneel between his knees on the stone floor, but he stopped her, curling his bare fingers around hers and pressing a kiss to the center of her palm instead. It didn’t surprise her really, the desire to keep that barrier between them, but he didn’t push her away when she moved tentatively to undo his breeches, nor when she closed her hand around the hard length of him when it eased from within the confines of his clothing.

He was fully hard, almost seeming painfully so, and she could hear his teeth grinding when she swept her fingertips along its length. She could be by no means as skilled or as practiced as Isabela, but it didn’t seem to matter if her caresses were clumsy and lacking in grace, and the way he slid his gauntleted hand into her hair and gripped her short locks until it hurt was reassurance enough. He’d closed his eyes, face angled faintly to the side as though to avoid looking at her, and while it wounded her a little she thought maybe she understood. She, after all, was not Isabela, or whoever he’d rather be imagining. One hand pushing against the metal of his breastplate she eased him back to sit against the wall and ducked her head, taking the length of him into her mouth.

He didn’t make a sound but exhaled all in a rush and the way both of his hands clutched at her hair reminded her that she used to be good at this, the one still wearing the gauntlet falling to grip her shoulder until she would not have been surprised to find the points at his fingertips had broken her skin. 

Pain to drive out weakness; the bite of metal sharpened her senses while seeming to slow the wild spin of her thoughts, too absorbed with the taste and texture of Fenris against her tongue and lips to notice that Anders had come to kneel behind her, that Fenris had thrown a bottle of something at him until she heard Fenris speak.

“Do it,” he ground out, a tightness to his low, pleasant voice that sent a shiver down her spine. “Get her ready.”

This was insanity, her being held here between them, Anders ready to give her almost too much attention, Fenris not nearly enough. She wondered if this was even what they wanted for all that they had started this, and though it would have been an _injustice_ (that made her almost laugh, feeling like maybe she was truly mad) she almost stopped until she felt Anders dip his fingers between her legs again and the sudden rush of pleasure robbed her of fleeting good sense.

The hand in her hair had relaxed its grip, coming down to stroke the side of her face with a gentleness she would have almost thought to call loving had it been anyone else but Fenris, whom she was not sure had such an emotion in his repertoire. Anders hooked an arm around her waist, the warm flat of his hand sliding down her belly to curve between her thighs, two fingers thrusting inside her with purpose as the pad of his thumb ground against the swollen knot of nerves between the slickness of her lips. His other hand had settled softly at the small of her back and was stroking, almost petting along the base of her spine and lower, over the curve of her rear. And then there were fingers there too, slick with oil and ever so gentle, pressing into the tight pucker between splayed cheeks. She could feel herself stretch, giving way for the digits that prepared her, the sensation a tight pleasure that would have crossed the border into pain had it been any less skillfully done.

It was something she had never tried what with her limited experience at these things, but where this seemed to be headed was clear and despite any misgivings she might have when sanity surfaced through the rushing torrent of pleasure of all of the hands and arms and fingers and mouths across her skin, she was grateful that they at least had the foresight required to ease the situation in the direction they wanted it to go. 

She let herself float in it, let the tide of sensation carry her away from the confliction in her thoughts, her hands gripping the leather-clad thighs splayed to either side of her as her eyes closed and her mouth had its way, focusing on the fingers that thrust and curled themselves into her. She moaned around Fenris’ and felt him throb in answer as her hips took on an unintentional rhythm, working themselves back and forth against the fingers buried within her. She could feel the rough brush of Anders’ mouth against her shoulder; he bit her and she bucked, shuddering and right on the edge of cresting when Fenris grabbed both of her wrists and held them against the hard metal at his chest.

“Don’t you dare finish, Marian,” he ordered. And then, not to her, “Don’t let her.”

 _Andraste’s flaming ass_. She was going to kill them both, fighting the sudden urge to weep with frustration or to hit something when the fingers inside her slowed to a still and then withdrew. A hand curled around her chin and eased her head up, freeing her mouth from its task and they lifted her together, holding her aloft between them. Fenris turned her to face Anders again and she wound her arms around his neck, feeling that tingle of panic again at being bereft of even the control of standing on her own two feet.

But that was ridiculous – she could feel Fenris behind her, holding her waist and guiding her thighs upward until her legs hooked around Anders’ slim hips. Fenris wouldn’t just _drop_ her, and Anders, from the look of rapt concentration on his face, had a vested interest in bearing his part of her weight. Fenris supported her, holding her back against his chest as Anders reached between their bodies and guided himself into her, groaning softly against her ear as his hips slid home. Her back arched, thighs flexing to tighten about him as he filled her, the feeling almost deliciously uncomfortable as parts of her long unused stretched to accommodate.

They shifted her weight between them, her arms moving to wind tighter around Anders’ neck as he held her against his chest. She could feel slender fingers at her backside, thrusting in once without preamble and again, urging whimpering sound to claw its way out of her throat and bury itself against the hammering pulse beneath her lips as the digits were replaced with something infinitely thicker and harder, still slicked with her saliva from moments before.

It hurt and she almost wasn’t ready for it despite the oil and the careful attention, losing herself intentionally in the heavy pulse between her thighs and the way her skin tingled with sparks everywhere Anders’ fingers travelled, the way her breasts felt tender and swollen where they pressed against his chest, and the sharp teeth that sunk themselves into her shoulder. 

And then the endless incremental slide ended and she was pinioned between their bodies, trapped between the man she genuinely liked and the man she liked to fight with, shuddering with relief and want and with a feeling of incredible fullness. She wanted them to move, was almost desperate for it, animal in lust and want and sweetly suffering under their previous denial. She scraped her nails along the back of Anders’ neck, digging them into the taut, straining muscles of his back and reached behind her to curl her fingers into Fenris’ hair as he lapped at the raw-feeling flesh he’d bitten.

It was halting and slow at first, frustrating almost, but eventually, impossibly, they found a rhythm; one thrust forward as the other pulled back, balancing her body between them and her pleasure on the edge of a knife. Anders slid a hand between their bodies and closed his fingers around the little swollen pearl there, a spark of energy leaping that made her shatter with a scream that echoed in all of the dark corners of the room.

But they didn’t stop, making it somehow to the floor, all still interconnected as Anders lay back with Hawke straddled atop him. He bucked up into her, lifting her hips back against Fenris who pressed her down again, the pace growing quicker, more frantic now that they need no longer carefully hold her aloft. Reaching, she grasped Anders wrists and pulled them up over his head, pinning them and him beneath her as Fenris pushed her down with a hand between her shoulder blades to lie against his chest. She could hear both of their breathing, harsh and ragged as her own.

Frost swept overheated skin, chilling in sharp contrast to warm mouths and the hot press of their bodies, and she shuddered, arching when the cool metal tips of Fenris’ gauntlet swept down her spine almost hard enough to hurt as he leaned down over her body, reaching to cover both her hands with one of his where they pinned Anders to the floor.

She came again, and then again, and maybe a fourth time as well, losing track in the midst of the complicated way their bodies moved against each other until she felt like she was floating, buoyed on the crests of pleasure. Grey Warden stamina was apparently not a joke or a myth but a reality, and Fenris seemed stubbornly intent on matching Anders stroke for stroke, a tumble of what sounded like curses spilling out of his mouth in Arcanum along with the occasional murmur of her name.

Marian.

Anders said it too, mouthing it against her shoulders and the top of her chest, against her cheek and throat like a prayer. He told her in broken whispers of the tightness of her body, of how beautiful he thought she was, how good she smelled, tasted, that he’d wanted her for _so long_ …

It was almost a relief when Fenris’ hand closed itself hard on her hair and dragged her head back, burying himself deep and hard into her until he spilled himself with a strangled shout. She could feel him slowly soften inside her as he pulled her up to lay back against him, trapping her arms to her sides and crushing her to his chest nearly tight enough to make her ribs ache. No longer pinned, Anders hands moved to her hips and he thrust upward into her, long, deep strokes that made her whole body shake in Fenris’ grasp until he crested too, back arching and head thrown back, crowing her name. 

Sparks flew, finding every sensitive part, ricocheting from her breasts to her thighs to the very core of her, and she toppled over the edge herself one last time, vision blurred and mind blissfully blank, pliant and exhausted and well-spent.

**

When she came back to herself, eventually, Anders was fleeing and Fenris was already gone. The belt of her red robe was missing and in its pocket, folded neatly, was a page of Anders’ manifesto.


	5. Seastorms and the Winter Cold

The second bath, cold this time, did not help as much as she was hoping. Nor did her dogged scouring of the kitchen or the bathing chamber; she didn’t feel right about allowing her household staff to clean up her mess, both literal and figurative.

The silence in the estate had swollen like an overripe berry, welling up like blood from a pinpricked finger that threatened to spill all over and stain everything.

It had gotten dark, nightfall coming earlier and earlier now that winter was on its way. The evenings in Kirkwall were cool, but it was nothing against the sort of winters she’d weathered in Ferelden; not the one they’d spent in Amaranthine, shivering in a poorly insulated shack on the outskirts of some small town while her father had been alive . Not the one she’d weathered bivouacking in the ruins of Ostagar, with Carver.

A Champion’s armor was good for many things. Between it and the bottle of cheap wine that was at the present time nearly empty, Hawke was pleasantly warm even where she sat on the hard, cold stone steps of a mausoleum in the shadowy evening darkness of the Chantry cemetery.

Her grandparents were buried here, in the very mausoleum she was sitting against in fact, a testament to past times when the Amell name was worthy and respected rather than being wrested from the dirt by someone like her; someone who was infinitely better at swinging sharp things into other people’s faces than talking politics, no matter how much she enjoyed the clothes and the parties.

Her mother was buried here too, not in the mausoleum but beneath a wide stone slab. _Devoted wife and beloved mother_ , the inscription read, written for her by Aveline because at the time she hadn’t been able to do small things like comb her own hair or wash her face, let alone pen an epitaph. Varric had written the eulogy she’d read at the small memorial service; she wasn’t proud of that, but she thought her mother would understand. It had been a thing of beauty, at least, worthy of the noble heritage Leandra Hawke-Amell had reclaimed.

She wondered, through the occasional swig of wine, what they would write on her gravestone were she to die, a casualty of the madness continually surrounding Kirkwall. _Champion Hawke, savior of Kirkwall_ maybe, or _Hawke, dragon’s-bane and slayer of Arishoks._ She rather thought the last one had the appropriate level of hyperbole; one Arishok was hard enough to believe, why not add two or three more to the mix just for fun?

And what would she write, if it were left up to her? She had no idea. _Loving sister, daughter and friend_ , if she was feeling charitable maybe. _Marian Hawke, fucking idiot_ if she wasn’t.

She wasn’t. Not usually.

She was lounging on the stair like a discarded suit of armor, wearing her helm to hide her face and to give her a little bit of privacy when other visitors came to leave flowers on the graves of loved ones departed. She wasn’t hard to identify, she thought the Amell crest on the shoulder of her armor rather did that for her, but no one bothered her here except for one little girl in a yellow dress who had given her a flower. The child’s sweet face and dark hair reminded her so much of Bethany as a girl that she’d wept behind her visor, only raising it again to drink once the sun went down and the cemetery was empty.

When Isabela came sauntering through the landscaped archway that partitioned this private space from the street, the face-plate of her helm came back down with a click and she idly sloshed the remnants of wine in the bottom of the bottle.

“I thought I might find you here,” the Rivaini said smoothly, coming to sit down on the steps next to her. She immediately cussed and put both hands beneath her rear. “How is your ass not freezing off?”

“Armor,” Hawke said, and was surprised at the way the word came out slurred. Drunker than she thought; oh well. Wouldn’t be the first time. “And pants. And less ass.”

Isabela snorted and took the bottle out her hand, lifting it up to sniff at its mouth and then wrinkling her nose and handing it back. “You’ve had a trying day, I take it.”

A bark of laughter escaped her mouth and she let herself drop down to lie across the stairs, her armor making an unpleasant clanging sound. “You have no idea,” she said, thinking of Merrill, of Sebastian, of Fenris and Anders, and even Aveline.

“I’ll bet.” Isabela’s voice was vaguely soothing, but that could have also been mockery; Hawke couldn’t see her face, and sometimes with the pirate there was very little difference. There was a long pause while the stars slowly coming out above them swam in little watery lines back and forth across her vision, and then she was being hauled up by both of Isabela’s hands on her arm. “Alright then, come on my girl. Creepy cemeteries are not for sleeping.”

“Sure they are,” she argued with doubtful eloquence. “The eternal sleep of the dead. That’s the whole- the whole point, right?”

“Lovely, drunk _and_ morbid. Add a little brooding to the mix and you’ll turn into Fenris.”

Thank the Maker for her helm; at the mention of his name she could feel her face go bright red. Rather than comment on the brooding, on her morbidity or on Fenris, she settled on the only safe topic available as Isabela tried to pull her to her feet.

“I’m not drunk,” she argued, because it was the principle of the thing. Somehow. “Okay, okay, Andraste’s flaming asscheeks,” she complained when Isabela pulled her to her feet. “I’m up. Fuck. And I’m not drunk,” she said again, listing vaguely to one side until Isabela slung one of her arms over her shoulders and held her up. 

“Uh huh.”

“I can handle the liquor. It’s just the spinning and the gravity I’m having trouble with.”

**

Isabela took her back to the Hanged Man. The estate was much closer but Hawke needed to walk it off and really, she had no pressing need to go home anyway. She let herself be poured through the tavern door and up the stairs to Isabela’s sparsely furnished room instead, sinking down on the bed with a sigh and a creak and reaching to run a hand through her hair, only to be prevented by the helm she was still wearing. Her metal gauntlet clanged against the helmet and inwardly she sighed, giving up on it and dropping her hand into her lap. Blast it all.

Laughing at her again, like usual, Isabela reached over and lifted the helmet free, peering down into Hawke’s face as she blinked against the sudden brighter light. “Oh,” she said, looking around the room as though she had no idea how she’d gotten there. “Balls.”

Isabela sighed at her and nudged an empty overturned crate with her toe, using it as a makeshift chair to sit down across from Hawke. “Eloquent as always,” she commented wryly as she pulled one of Hawke’s arms into her lap and began undoing the catches on her armor, making a tidy pile of the metal and leather to one side. Hawke just watched her, uncomprehending but not quite of a mind to put a stop to it. It felt sort of good in a way, weight coming off of her limbs one piece at a time and she liked watching Isabela’s clever fingers move, dark and warm against the cold plate and the pale skin beneath it. 

It was distracting actually, those long, graceful fingers. And the fact that she could see right down Isabela’s shirt from this angle was not terribly helpful.

“What were you doing out there tonight?”

Her head snapped up, feeling her cheeks go crimson. She would blame that on the wine. She would. “What? Oh. Thinking.”

“You hate thinking.”

“I do not,” Hawke gruffed, offended. “I just like it less than slashing, punching and stabbing.”

“You really need to add new verbs to your repertoire.” Isabela’s full lips quirked into a cheeky smile and Hawke rolled her eyes, lifting both hands obediently so that the pirate could lift her breastplate up over her head. “There are so many to choose from,” the pirate purred, settling back down to unlace Hawke’s greaves and boots. “Licking, sucking.”

“Fucking,” Hawke supplied, knowing where this was going. With Isabela it only ever went to one place, after all.

“There’s my girl,” Isabela beamed. “There’s also _writhing_ and _pulsating,_ and _throbbing_ really shouldn’t be ignored either. But with all those nights at the Rose, you know all about that.”

“Yeah,” Hawke said for lack of a better response and lifted a hand to rub at the back of her neck, purposefully not looking at her friend. She wasn’t all that great at dissembling when she was sober and now she was drunk(ish) and they were alone, and there was no one else to deflect Isabela’s attention toward. And somehow she’d been sort of deftly removed from her hard metal carapace and was now sitting in her shirt and trousers, bare feet dangling over the side of Isabela’s bed.

“Stop it,” the Rivain ordered, sounding annoyed and wresting Hawke from the path her thoughts had taken.

“What?”

“Stop it. Stop _thinking_.”

“What the f-” she started, frowning and annoyed, and stopped, throwing her hands up irritably in defeat. “Fine. What would _you_ like me to do, Isabela?”

There was more to her angry tirade but she found herself cut short, about to loose a long string of curses against the soft full lips that had pressed themselves suddenly against her mouth. All of her words descended into nothing, combining together to make a muffled moan. 

Encouraged, Isabela clambered skillfully onto the bed, straddling Hawke’s lap with her bare, sleek thighs and sliding tanned arms around her neck. Their mouths moved together almost gently (this seemed to get easier all the time, Hawke thought, absently), both of their heads tipping to one side or the other to slant their mouths together. She could feel the metal of Isabela’s piercing tickle against her chin where the pirate sucked her lower lip into her mouth, and Hawke shivered involuntarily when she traced it with the tip of her tongue.

She felt a tingle of cool air against her back where Isabela had rucked up her shirt, and then a rush of warmth as hands, hard and callused but still softer than her own, smoothed against the base of her spine. Nails pressed into her flesh, dragging along the lower part of her back and she held Isabela tighter, arms flexing to draw her in closer, to press their bodies together. 

Normally she would be taller than Isabela, but here in her lap Isabela towered over her and used the advantage to press Hawke back a degree, curling one hand at the side of her throat to tip her head up and slide coral colored lips along her neck. Hawke hummed in the back of her throat, eyes closing and hands coming easily around her slim waist to hover just above the Rivaini’s pert backside. Unsure of what to do with herself she mimicked the movement of Isabela’s hands a moment ago, dragging the short-cropped edges of her nails against the pirate’s flesh through the material of her tunic.

“I always knew you’d taste good, sweet thing,” Isabela was purring in her ear, the tip of her tongue darting out to draw Hawke’s earlobe between her teeth. “You smell good too, like leather and earth.” The Rivaini laughed against the side of her face, the warmth of her breath tickling against her throat and making her shiver. “I should get you out of that old tin can more often.”

Hawke laughed awkwardly, leaning forward to press her lips against the top of Isabela’s breast just below the ridge her collarbone. She had always thought that though Isabela smelled like the sea and jasmine, she might taste like one of those cinnamon candies that lured you in with their sweetness only to burn your tongue when you’ve had too much. She was shy about saying those things though, couldn’t imagine herself poetic with pretty words in the bedroom. She would sound like a fool and she already felt like one, unsure of what to do with her hands and with the rest of her. It had been different with Merrill, sweeter, more subtle. It was easier too, feeling as though maybe the little elf was as innocent as she seemed and less timid in the face of it, but Isabela… Isabela had all of the experience in the world (literally, she thought) and she found herself almost paralyzed, afraid to make the wrong move and expose her lack of expertise.

“Stop it,” Isabela said from somewhere above her and she started, blinking her eyes and looking upward. The pirate was smiling at her bemusedly, head canted to one side. 

“Sorry,” Hawke said automatically, and Isabela shook her head.

“Stop thinking,” she said, and reached down to take Hawke’s wrists, bringing her hands away from her back and holding them between their bodies. Immediately Hawke looked away, feeling uneasy and as though she had embarrassed herself, until Isabela lifted one of her hands and sucked the point of a callused finger into her mouth. Her chest swelled with a sudden breath, attention immediately drawn back as was intended, and she couldn’t help but watch with a kind of rapt fascination as Isabela loosened the laces of her tunic and guided Hawke’s hand inside to lie against her breast.

Isabela was warm all over, warm and soft and _sleek_ like one of those cats Anders loved so much; with a confidence she wasn’t sure was real or wine, Hawke slid her hand downward to cup the full weight of her breast, feeling its dusky tip pebble and press against her palm. “Harder,” Isabela urged, bringing a hand up to smooth through Hawke’s ruffled hair and along the side of her face. “Don’t think. Just _feel_.”

Her grip tightened a fraction and when there was no complaint but a murmur of encouragement, more, and she watched in near awe at the way her strong, pale fingers pressed into the pliant bronzed flesh cradled within her palm. Yes, _this_ , she liked this too; the Champion had breasts beneath her armor, even if the world seemed to forget it sometimes. 

Thinking of other things she liked, she eased aside the other side of Isabela’s loosened tunic with her free hand and bent her head to her bosom, lapping a long trail from the underside of her breast over the nipple that was slowly peaking in the cool air and upward to plant a searing kiss just beneath the ridge of a collarbone. Encouraged by a low, unabashed moan that she could feel vibrate through tanned skin, she closed her mouth around that same dusky nipple and sucked until it was impossibly hard, opening her jaw to scrape the flats of her lower teeth against the underside of her breast.

“You’re good at this,” Isabela sighed, sounding dreamy. “I knew you would be. Women are always better,” she said, and wound her fingers gently into Hawke’s dark hair. “More intuitive, softer, pretty. You’re pretty.”

Against her breast Hawke laughed uneasily, having nothing to say to that. Isabela reached down and lifted her chin, maintaining patiently until their eyes met. “You are pretty, Marian. And you need to learn to take a compliment.”

“Yes ma’am,” was all she could think to say, faintly sarcastic, fighting the sudden heat that wanted to crawl up her chest to cover her face.

Isabela relented, ducking to rub her cheek against Hawke’s, who turned her head to nuzzle into the shining wave of dark hair that fell between them. “That’s captain, if you please.”

Hawke chuckled, raising her hands to gather Isabela’s hair in her fingers and bare the side of her neck, nipping where the column of her throat turned into the muscle of her shoulder. “Aye aye, Captain.”

“Do that again,” Isabela directed, voice hitching, and she complied. Feeling brave she let her tongue flicker out against the faintly reddened flesh and Isabela moaned. 

Her hands swept low, tracing the taut curve of Isabela’s waist and the lush swell of her hips to hook her fingers into her tunic, easing it upward and off. The blue bandana came off with it and she flung them to lay discarded across one of the crates in the corner, pulling the Rivaini woman tighter against her until the whole of her torso could feel the heat radiating from the flat plane of Isabela’s stomach and the heavy, perfect curves of her breasts. 

Eagerly she pulled out of her own shirt – maybe too eagerly because Isabela laughed at her sudden enthusiasm, burying the sound in a kiss before embarrassment had a chance to register and Hawke pulled away. She was pushed down on top of the bed instead, leaving Isabela to rise up above her in the flickering candlelight like some sort of exotic goddess of the sea. Next to the Rivaini Marian had always felt sort of plain, but it was easy to forget all about that when there were hands curling into her hair and over her shoulders, and an expert tongue and a set of lips dropping searing kisses down along the top of her chest and lower, trailing a path between the subtle rise of her breasts and dipping toward her navel. Instead she felt grateful, honored in a way by not only the interest but the care. She could never say it out loud, but that meant more to her than anything.

Isabela’s fingers were skillfully unhooking her belt, drawing it away and tackling the laces of her trousers until the garment loosened around her hips and was tugged downward, leaving them both clad in nothing but their smalls.  And Isabela’s boots.

She’d always liked those boots. There was just something about how they covered while leaving nothing to the imagination, and the hand span of bare skin between the leather and the line of Isabela’s smalls had always fascinated her. She thought about it now as Isabela moved over her again, clever fingers tracing the pale, muscled length of Hawke’s calves and thighs to tangle in the scrap of cloth.

“Wait,” she heard herself say, hands reaching to close over ambitious fingers. “You don’t have to do that.” 

Isabela stopped, blinking at her owlishly, and she felt herself flush. She was such an idiot. “What I mean by that,” she corrected, regaining control of herself, “Is that I want to. Let me. I want to, ah, I want to touch you.”

Isabela grinned amicably and leaned down, the ends of her long hair brushing softly against Hawke’s chest as she bent forward to kiss her. “Women are good for six things, remember?” she said softly, moving to stand next to the bed and step out of her smallclothes. “Let me show you one of them.”

Hawke lifted her hips, helping Isabela to strip her own remaining garment off, lying on her side as directed as Isabela mirrored her position in reverse, placing a lingering kiss against the flat plane of her stomach just above the junction of her thighs. She in turn was presented unshyly with Isabela’s snaking hips, one long, toned leg bent slightly to reveal unabashedly the deep pink flesh hidden between them. She could smell the Rivaini’s musky scent, all spice and sex and bit her lip, transfixed by the sight until Isabela eased her legs apart, hooking one of Hawke’s strong thighs over her shoulder so she could place another heated kiss between them.

She sucked in a breath, vision going hazy for a long moment as Isabela’s skilled tongue flickered out and tasted her for the first time, lightly and then with more pressure, burying her head with brazen enthusiasm between her legs. Uncertain of her own skill she lingered against Isabela’s thighs, nibbling gently at the top of one thigh until the pirate’s hips were canted forward in unmistakable request. Taking her cue from what Isabela had done, she slid her hand up the taut curve of the other woman’s belly to spread her lower lips with two fingers, searching out that little knot of nerves with her tongue and flicking against it. 

The dark groan of encouragement that reverberated between her own legs spurred her into sudden bravery and she wrapped her lips around the swollen nub, suckling with the gentle pressure she herself enjoyed, and slid her hand over the generous curve of Isabela’s hip to rest at her taut backside, squeezing the firm flesh.

This too is a test, she thought as pleasure rolled between them, small sounds muffled against slick skin, hips shifting for the best angle. That morning with Merrill and Sebastian had been a test of control; with Fenris and Anders a test of endurance. This was a test of concentration and she was determined not to be undone in this thing she had spent so much time thinking about in the private recesses and lonely expanses of head and bed.

Her fingers curled, thrusting inward and faintly forward to search out that little spot that evoked such strong sensations when stimulated by her own fingers and was gratified to feel Isabela buck against her hand, rewarded in turn by a tongue that thrust agilely into her own sex. She could feel the round ball of the piercing below Isabela’s lower lip rub against her own little pearl and she shuddered, using her mouth to mimic the sensation as her fingers thrust and worked inside the tight channel that clenched muscles surprisingly strong around the invading digits.

Making Isabela break for her was an easy thing, and she felt heady victory when she heard her name muffled against her own thighs. It was a rush of power she hadn’t acutely felt the lack of until it was at hand, and there was nothing more she wanted than to do it again, and again, and again.

Her tongue laved the sensitive knot of nerves between Isabela’s quaking thighs, pursing her lips around it and humming until the Rivaini twitched and thrust her hips forward, concentrating so hard on bringing the other woman to a second climax that her own snuck up on her with the same stealth that her friend used in battle. Her vision clouded, going dark for a long moment as the height of pleasure was strung out longer and longer by the thrumming between her thighs until she crested, her entire body convulsing.

They spun sensation out between them, neither rushing, each more concerned with the other’s pleasure than their own and always having more than enough to share. Fingers thrust, tongues plundered and the sound of names needfully groaned out along with breathy adorations and Isabela’s semi-constant praise filled the air along with the heady smell of sex. 

Eventually they stopped, they had to, Marian swimming in a deep warm ocean of wine and seawater musk, and Isabela with a satisfied smile quirking her lush mouth.

**

“That’s one of six?” Hawke was asking as Isabela reversed her position again and collapsed down onto the bed at her side. After a moment of palpable hesitation Hawke hooked an arm over her and Isabela nestled comfortably into the embrace, cheekily working her naked backside into the curve of her hips. “Can’t you do that with a man?” 

Isabela laughed and brought the other woman’s fingers to her mouth and licked them, tasting herself and inhaling the musky scent mixed with the leather, earth and metal that was uniquely Hawke. “You can, but it’s so much better this way, without a cock beating you about the face.”

Hawke gave a bark of laughter but soon quieted, her hand trailing absently along Isabela’s arm, reclaimed from her lips. “What happens now?” she asked quietly, making Isabela turn to look at her. “Do you want me to leave?”

“Only if you’re thoroughly satisfied. When I got your letter I-”

“Letter?” Hawke queried, arching an eyebrow. “What letter?”

_Shit,_ she thought. “Nevermind.”

“Isabela.” Hawke prodded her side, her voice pitched in familiar warning. “What letter?”

“Oh balls, I should have known,” Isabela groused, hauling herself up from the bed with a sigh and padding naked and unselfconscious across the floor to dig around in her haphazard pile of things.

Hawke eyed the Amell crest stamped into the parchment with some suspicion, turning to lie on her back with her head pillowed on one arm as Isabela read aloud. 

“ _Isabela is a lot of talk, which is fortunate because I sometimes I can’t stop staring at her mouth. I’m pretty sure she notices, because every once in a while she’ll wink at me across the table and it’s all I can do not to turn bright red. Pale skin is no good for bluffing, and that Isabela cheats at cards is beginning to wear through as an excuse given that I get caught up in the dark shadow between her breasts and give away my hand._

_She has lovely breasts, lovely hips, lovely thighs, and boots that are slowly driving me to distraction. I can’t for the life of me figure out why she doesn’t wear pants but then I’d be an ingrate if I complained, what with the way I can’t help but watch when she walks, body swaying, or stands with her hip pushed out to one side or, Maker help me, when she bends over as she does with no regard for anyone. The way her tunic works its way up over the swell of her…_

_I shouldn’t be having these thoughts about a woman who has become so easily my friend. It seems somehow indecent even though she’s made it perfectly clear that I’m welcome to spend my evenings with her if I so choose. I always decline but, Maker help me, it’s hard not to think about it when she’s naked in my bed with her body pressed up against my pillow. In the morning when she leaves, sober enough to find her way back to Lowtown, I press my face against the sheets and cushions and inhale the scent of her, spice and wine and the sea._

_I don’t do anything more than watch her while she is here, smoking, sitting in a chair, pretending to read a book lest she wake up and catch me, but the minute she goes… I can’t say I’m proud of what I do, curling the sheets around me so I can roll in her scent like a mabari in a pile of leaves, but they are always still warm with the heat of her and I strip naked to feel it against my skin._

_Sometimes I imagine her with Anders, way back before I knew him myself, or with Fenris, or even Sebastian (he would die if he knew, or shoot me), but mostly when my hands trace the curve of my own hips and slide between my thighs, I think of her with me. I think of how I would like to peel her out of her scanty clothes, how I would like to press my mouth to the swell of her breast, bury myself between them and her thighs and to see if I can taste the sea in her essence the way I imagine I might._

_Maybe one day, I’ll get brave enough, or drunk enough to-”_

Hawke, who had been slowly turning a variety of interesting shades of red, snatched the letter abruptly. The note crunched in her hand with a fierce clench of her fist, which then beat a slow, heavy rhythm against her forehead.

“Fuck.”

Isabela frowned at her, perplexed, and sat down on the edge of the bed. Hawke threw an arm over her eyes, hiding behind her forearm.

There was a long moment of silence before Isabela reached to pry the note out of her friend’s hand, laying it out on her knee and smoothing the wrinkles from the paper. “I take it we weren’t supposed to get those.” _Oh, this is good,_ she thought, unable to help being a bit amused.

“Those?” Hawke asked weakly, lifting up a little to lean propped up on her elbows and stare at her with an adorably aggrieved expression on her face. “We?”

“Merrill stopped by earlier and gave me the letter she got. She said she thought it was meant for me or Varric for a book or something, but I told her I didn’t think so. You have a way with words, Marian Hawke. I told her she should go for it.”

“Isabela,” Hawke croaked, sounding horrified.

“What?” She queried, unperturbed, her eyes narrowing in interest when Hawke wouldn’t look her in the eye. “Oh, she did it, didn’t she!” Isabela clapped her hands. “Bravo Merrill! How was it? Did she show you all her tattoos? How did she- oh come on, you can’t go now!” She exclaimed as Hawke sighed and rolled out of the narrow bed, reaching for her clothing. “Tell me _everything._ ”

“I slept with Fenris,” Hawke said bluntly.

She didn’t blink. “So? It’s about time.”

That pulled Hawke up short. “I thought you and he… you know.”

“I don’t _own_ him, Hawke, and he certainly doesn’t own me. Fenris can do as he likes, he’s a big boy. But I suppose you know that by now.”

Hawke squeezed her eyes shut, looking pained. “Isabela...”

“Oh Mari, come _on._ ” Isabela rolled her eyes and grabbed one of Hawke’s boots before she could get to it, holding it behind her. “Stop acting like it’s the end of the world. Obviously this was just what you needed to break your dry spell.”

“My dry… oh, for fuck’s sake.”

Isabela canted her head to one side and gave Hawke a withering look. “Was it supposed to be a secret? I _knew_ we never slept together all those times, no matter how drunk I was. I know when I’ve been fucked, thank you very much, and I rolled out of your bed as fresh and pure as a virgin. Well, you know. Kind of.”

“But you were the one who told all those stories!” 

“And you never bothered to correct me.”

Hawke sighed and lifted a hand to rub at her temples. “I don’t feel like fucking arguing with you, woman.”

“You don’t want to argue? That’s a first.”

“I mean it, ‘Bela,” she said severely, and sat down heavily on the end of the bed, bending forward to rest her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. “I’m not exactly good at this kind of thing, if you haven’t noticed. It’s been a- a long time.”

Isabela sighed, feeling a bit guilty despite herself, and moved over to curl her naked body against Hawke’s side, laying her head against the back of the woman’s shoulder and idly rubbing a hand up and down her spine. They sat that way for a long moment until the silence between them was comfortable again, and able to be broken gently. “When was the last time?”

“Jethann,” Hawke admitted and laughed humorlessly, straightening. “Maybe five or six years ago? I don’t know. He’s sort of sweet. I still see him, sometimes, but just to talk.” She grimaced, shrugging her shoulders. 

She shouldn’t pry, she knew that. There was probably some unspoken friendship rule against it, but she’d never cared much for rules. Obviously. “And before then?”

A longer pause this time. “Ostagar. There was… someone. He died.”

_And that’s what you get for sticking your nose into places it doesn’t belong._

“Mari, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” Her voice softened, gentle in the quiet, but Hawke just shrugged her shoulders.

“It was a long time ago. Anyway, ever since then it’s just been the wrong place, or the wrong time, or the wrong person or whatever.” She cracked a smile and lifted an irascible eyebrow at Isabela, who subtly narrowed her eyes. “Or the Qunari were invading and I was getting stabbed by the Arishok, or blown up by blood mages, that sort of thing. I didn’t think it’d catch up with me, but,” she snorted, snapping her fingers. “Maker sure showed me. _‘Have sex, dumbass,’_ ” she mocked, pointing a finger at the ground as though to mimic the god himself, bossing about a tiny dust Hawke somewhere on the floor. “ _‘Or the universe will conspire against you!’_ ”

Isabela laughed because she was supposed to given the rare flash of Hawke’s humor, but put her arms around her friend and hugged her fiercely anyway. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.”

“You better not, or I will have to fucking kill you.”

“Oh Hawke, how I love you.”

Hawke rolled her eyes and leaned over to drop a rough and unexpected kiss against Isabela’s temple. “I suppose I love you too.”


	6. Invisible Ink

There was light coming through the gap under the bottom of Varric’s door when she finally left Isabela’s room and, in a hasty decision made more by the inevitability of the situation than by any particular bravery on her part, she knocked and stepped into the bright candlelight when he told her to enter.

Her dwarven friend was sitting at the head of his table, as usual, books piled around him. She smiled to see him writing, though the expression wavered and faded when he looked up and put aside his quill, realizing it was her.

“Hawke,” he acknowledge, one side of his mouth lifting in a familiar rakish grin. “What brings you to my humble abode?”

“Humble my ass,” she muttered; there were carpets and tapestries here that probably cost just as much as anything her mother had purchased for the estate. In fact, Varric and her mother had similar tastes; absently she reached out to finger one of the wall-hangings, trying to build up enough courage to break the silence.

Varric was patiently waiting for her to say something, and finally she cleared her throat. “It’s come to my attention that you may have receive a… a letter,” she said, clutching her helm to her hip as though she could put it back on and instantly make this whole situation go away.

He didn’t react, but then Varric usually played his hand close to his chest, merely giving her another teasing grin. “From the noises coming out of Rivaini’s room, I’d say we all got one.”

“All… got… one…” she repeated dumbly, and then felt herself go bright red. Merrill, Isabela, and Varric; Sebastian, Anders and Fenris. Even Aveline. “Ah fuck. That would explain it.” She sighed, sitting down heavily in the chair Varric cleared for her and lifting a hand to rub miserably at her forehead. “I guess that makes me the stupidest woman in Thedas.”

The dwarf looked almost sympathetic; like Aveline he had been there from almost the beginning. These days there probably wasn’t anyone who knew more about her than he did. “Didn’t mean to send them, I take it?”

“Didn’t send them at all,” she corrected. “No chance you didn’t read…? No, of course not,” she sighed again when he fixed her with a mild look. “Do I owe you an apology?”

Varric was silent a moment, reaching out finally to shut the blank-paged journal he was working in. “I may owe you one.” He cleared his throat. “You’re a beautiful woman Marian, but I’m a one-crossbow kind of guy.”

She stared at him blankly for a long moment, confused, before a rush of relief hit her hard enough to make her giddy. Oh, praise the Maker. He was trying to let her down easy. 

Unexpectedly she burst out laughing. “I would never come between you and Bianca, mostly out of a desire to avoid being shot. What I wrote, I wrote a long time ago. When things were-” and here she faltered, searching for words that never did come easily. “Were different.” She gave him a crooked smile. “I just didn’t want to screw things up between us.”

“Never,” he promised, and she believed him.

Unbelievably relieved, she sank back in her chair and rubbed a hand over her face. “Maker’s bloody balls, you would not believe this day I’ve had.”

“Smoke?” he asked, lighting his pipe and puffing comfortably.

“Yes.  No.  I sort of promised Sebastian I wouldn’t.” But she accepted the mug of ale he offered her readily enough.

“Make any other promises I should know about? You know, for historical purposes?”

She choked a little and chuckled, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Well, let’s see. I’ve been snogged by the Guard-Captain, been given theoretical _vallaslin_ by our very own Dalish pariah. Shagged Isabela up one side and down the other. Fenris will probably never speak to me again, and I may have accidentally proposed to Anders,” she frowned, her expression darkening. “I should probably propose to Sebastian, on account of his honor. Maker, I have so many apologies to make, I can’t even-” She took a deep breath, exhaling through her nose. “I am never writing anything down again.”

“That’s too bad, I was going to ask if you wanted to co-author the sequel to _Siege Harder_. What do you think of _The Heroine of Hightown?_ ”

“Ugh, Varric.”

“ _The Lioness of Lowtown?_ ”

“Varric.”

“ _Undressed in the Undercity?_ ”

She laughed despite herself. “Living this close to Isabela is bad for your brain.”

Varric only looked smug. “Got you to smile though, didn’t it?”

**

He watched Hawke through the veil of smoke that curled up from his pipe as she gathered herself to go, tucking her helm against her hip. 

“You won’t really write about this, will you?” She asked, settling a hand on his shoulder, and he reached out to take it, pressing a kiss worthy of an Orlesian courtier to her scarred and battered knuckles.

“Of course not, Beautiful.”

Marian favored him with a smile that didn’t make an appearance nearly often enough. The world hadn’t done her any favors in terms of tragedy, and it was easy to forget just how young she was except in times like these when she smiled with both corners of her mouth, not just that crooked twist of lips that served as a poor substitute for the real thing. “Thanks, dwarf.”

“Don’t mention it, human.”

She smirked and turned to go, and on a whim he called out to her again, making her pause. “How did it make you feel?” He asked, gesturing with one hand. “All of this?”

Hawke was quiet for a long moment, turning the question over in her head; eventually she shrugged. “I don’t know. Crazy. Confused. Loved, I guess.”

For a moment she sounded so much like the old Hawke, and so much like her sister. It pulled at something deep in his chest and he forced himself to smile sagely, like he was sure she was expecting him to. “Then it was worth it, wasn’t it?”

She hmphed, back to herself in an instant, and smirked. “I guess it was.”

The door clicked quietly as she let herself out, and he sat for a long time listening to the echoes of her footsteps fade away down the hall and for the sound of a door closing in the distance that meant that she was gone. Only then did he reach into the pocket of his shirt where her letter rested, tucked neatly and safe against his heart, pulling the already many-times-read page into the open to unfold it yet again.

There were many stories about the Champion that he would tell, many that had already been told and some that he had yet to write. He would tell of her grim determination and unwavering character, the handsomeness of her features and all her impossible victories. He would tell of her bravery and her sadness, her skill and her strength. He would make a history from these stories, because the world deserved to know, deserved to have a hero when it needed one, even if she wasn’t always what they thought.

But this was a story he would keep for himself, preserved and cared for, close to his heart. One of the two that he promised himself he would never tell.


	7. Epilogue

It seemed almost fitting that, at the end of the day, she was alone. She’d woken up to an empty bed, after all; that she’d fall asleep in one was appropriately symmetrical.

The foyer was warmly lit when she let herself quietly in through the front door of the Hawke Estate. The fireplace roared comfortingly, and Orana had lit the lamps and candles liberally scattered throughout the large room. After the Deep Roads and her uncle Gamlen’s musty shack, Hawke wasn’t really much of one for darkness. Light leaked into the vestibule through the open door, cutting a pathway over the clean-scrubbed stone tiles and making everything golden in contrast to the deep blues and purples of Hightown at night.

The air still carried a scent of freshly baked bread and her stomach rumbled, reminded suddenly that she’d missed dinner. She was sorely tempted to eat every single loaf she’d baked that morning once Sebastian and Merrill had gone their separate ways, to stuff every last crumb of bread in her mouth to avoid the inevitable confrontation with her friends when they either came around for it or she got brave enough to deliver. 

But no, she couldn’t do that to the starving orphans or urchins or whoever’s cause Sebastian was demanding she (and rightly so, she supposed) champion this week. If she did it would necessitate some kind of confession, and Maker help her but she thought another one of those so soon would kill her.

Sandal blinked up at her with wide, guileless eyes when she brought her journal down, the leather folder that held all her secrets contained in woefully honest pages. 

“Been into the post again, have we Sandal?” she asked quietly, and the little dwarf beamed.

“I like to stamp the wax.”

Hawke sighed, laying the parcel down on her writing desk. “So you do. And a good job, too.”

“Nice lady is pretty when she smiles. There should be more smiles. Smiles for everybody.” Hawke blinked down at the boy who, unabashedly and with great affection, had thrown his arms around her waist. “I love the nice pretty lady.”

Reaching down to very gently comb her hand through his unruly hair, Hawke smiled, stoically blinking when her eyes misted over with tears. “I love you too, silly boy. I love you too.”

**

Later, Bodahn padded around in his nightcap and thick gray woolen socks and Orana tinkered quietly with her lute as Sandal sprawled out on his belly and scratched random patterns into a sheet of paper with the sooty end of a twig, ignoring the sticks of colored wax placed in suggestion at his side. Hawke sat between them and fed Toothless from her plate, silent and listening.

This was the truth behind the Champion of Kirkwall, the woman who fought and bled and saved and lost: no matter what, there were people in this world who were willing to love her. No matter how she felt, she was never really alone. 

She was very lucky. And that she thought, truly, was the heart of the matter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reading through this story again for the first time in ages reminded me that I had once intended to do a few more stories set in this universe. I always liked this Hawke, and (I'll admit) I'm lazy - this is a perfect excuse to write porn while (trying to) minimize my need to fill everything with pages and pages of plot. I've got a few ideas in mind that might do for a sequel - what do you think?


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